


Venom Vs. The Thief Of Time

by gutterandthestars



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Eddie is all of us, Eddie is an idiot, Journalism, Other, procrastination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 20:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16709179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gutterandthestars/pseuds/gutterandthestars
Summary: Explain procrastination, Eddie....Massive thanks to escriveine and miriad for the beta!





	Venom Vs. The Thief Of Time

 

Venom eventually calls him on it after the fourth time Eddie abandons his desk to adjust the order of the mugs lined up on his kitchen work surface.

The periwinkle blue cabinets are warm and glowing in the afternoon sun and the smell of caramelised reconstituted potato products that now, Post Symbiosis, permanently pervades his whole apartment is especially pungent this close to the grill. He idly considers buying shares in whoever makes tater tots. It wouldn’t hurt to have some kind of retirement plan. Or something. He’ll think about it.

Then, because it’s why he’s here, he shuffles the mugs. Earlier he’d sorted them in descending order by number of chips, then by height, then by volume. He reflects on his next move, batting one of the mugs back and forth between his hands and displacing scattered potato crumbs.

While he’s here he should probably wipe down the countertops; he and Annie almost certainly aren’t ever going to be what they used to be - dammit he _likes_ Dan - but they’re friends now and she drops by sometimes and he doesn’t want her to think he’s a total slob without her.

Even if it’s, you know, true.

He might as well boil the kettle since it’s right there.  He’s been going through industrial quantities of instant hot cocoa since Venom took residence in his body and his life. Mrs Chen would probably have started asking questions, if she hadn’t seen them eat a whole human being right in front of her. What she actually does do is ring up the tater tots, chocolate and tins of powdered beverage and roll her eyes. Then she nags them. “You make sure he gets the proper nutrition! You need to eat properly!” she’ll say. He’s never sure which of them she’s addressing.

Eddie decides this afternoon’s mug parade will be ordered by color.  The kettle starts to cough and bubble as he places the mugs up against the wall, one by one.  He puts one of his hoodie strings into his mouth and chews mindlessly, drumming the countertop with his other hand.

Then he fiddles with the ring on his forefinger.

Venom is silent while he putters and shuffles around the kitchen, pours a small amount boiling water into the bottom of the mug, fumbles open a drawer to grab a teaspoon and mixes up the powder before adding the rest. Venom can stomach bones and skulls and frozen tots; Eddie just wants to drink cocoa without lumps in thank you so very much.

He feels the symbiote watching him though, a buzz of attention and awareness at the back of his mind, like his brain has something on the tip of its goopy, prehensile tongue, just out of reach.

He ignores it.

Eddie ambles back to his desk and slides his ass back in the chair, sipping from the mug and wincing, wiping his mouth.  In his absence - brief! brief absence! - his laptop screen has gone blank. He feels judged.

Eddie drops his chin into his hand and logs back in. Venom chooses this moment to speak up.

**You seem distracted. Is something wrong?**

Eddie sighs. Yeah, he knows. He knows.

“Nope, just gotta get this written and then we’re all done.”

**You seem reluctant to finish this article, Eddie.**

Ugh. Busted.

“No, no V. It’s not that, I’m uh, I’m just out of practice  Been a while, you know? When I was doing the Brock Report I could focus on the investigation, pound the streets…”

**…chomp heads…**

“Yeah you wish, buddy. No. I just had to have the bones of a script…”

**Bones!**

“…ha ha. I mean I could chop and change things around, man. Write how I wanted to. And I had a crew to film me. Half the time I just had to turn up the charm, nail my cues, bam, boom - instant journalism. Now, like, now I’ve got to put one word down after another. In _order,_ V. _Focus_ , y’know? And it’s hard. I’ve lost the habit. I know I need to get it done. This is just me procrastinating.”

**Explain procrastination, Eddie.**

“What, you all don’t have chores you want to avoid back on your asteroid, Venom?”

**No. We want something, we do it, we take it. Now!**

“It’s always now, with you. Don’t you ever put things off until later?”

**What would be the point in that?**

“I… Look, it just eases the process, okay? It’s like, I gotta get this done and I want to, I do. It’s just, it’s hard. To think. So these little distractions, uh, help me out. As I go. Y’know?”

**But it you would complete the work more quickly if you did not keep getting up to do pointless things. I do not understand.**

Eddie sighs all over again. He knows. He _knows_.

“It’s hard! I just got ants in my pants.”

**You do not.**

“It’s an expression, V.”

**I still don’t understand.**

“It’s like, I bargain with myself. I’ll do a few minutes, hit a certain word count and then I’ll give myself a reward.”

**For doing your job. For which you get paid?**

Eddie sighs. Sometimes Venom’s outsider’s point of view is… maddeningly, embarrassingly on point.

“Look, it’s how I roll. Quit bugging me and I’ll get it done, okay?”

Venom is silent.

Eddie goes another ten minutes and gets another couple of hundred words of dubious quality down on the screen. Almost ten minutes. Okay, eight, but he’s rounding up. He could use a break.

“Are you hungry? You’re hungry, right? I’ll put the grill on. I’ve still got some of those chicken nuggets you like.” He pushes back from the desk and finds his thighs are superglued to his seat.

**I am not hungry Eddie!**

“Sure you are! You’re always hungry. Let me up.”

**No.**

“I’ll get back to it when they’re done, you know you want food” he says, making to get up again, unsuccessfully.

**NO!**

Venom roars. Eddie strains to get out from his chair, which slips out from under him and he pitches forward. They tussle, sort of: Eddie flailing, Venom jerking him back towards the desk, gravity getting in on the argument and making its own opinions heard. Between them, physics splits the difference and Eddie crashes to the floor.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelps. Venom’s face floats over his own, fanged and drooling.

**You have work, Eddie.**

Yeah, he does, but he has a _process_. And Venom will come round eventually, except that now he’s getting tugged back up against his will, one serpentine tentacle righting the chair and it is _so on_.

Eddie roars right back, kicking the chair over again.  Venom snarls.

Then it’s wrestling on the floor and tentacles everywhere, and Eddie thinks: well, I was going to make food but this works too.

It’s not like it’s a fair fight.  If Venom was serious about restraining him it’d just pin Eddie to the chair and make his fingers tap at that keyboard for hours on end. He’d not be able to move a muscle but that would be too… parasitic. Not to mention untenable in the long term.  Also, it’s not like any article written by Venom would get past his editors. And that’s a horrifying thought.

An errant tentacle smacks him about the face. Okay, yes, they’re fighting here. Eddie twists his hips, a mostly futile attempt to gain control and Venom surges back, pinning his wrists to the floor. Eddie _likes_ this. He jerks an arm free - victory! - and Venom roars, various appendages recoiling across the room.

There’s a crash, as if half a dozen hot beverage receptacles cry out in terror and are suddenly silenced.

They freeze in the middle of the floor, guilty, struggle forgotten. Venom jerks them to their feet; Eddie’s arms pinwheel briefly.

Eddie looks at the constellation of bright ceramic shards all over the dark wood of his kitchen floor and starts chewing his sleeve, contemplative-like. Venom extends itself in a sinuous arc, its face hovering over the sad pile of debris.

**Aww. That’s a shame. We will have to purchase more of these now.**

They both stand there, blinking for a bit. Eddie shrugs. “Eh, this is my chance to trade up. Get a matching set maybe.”

**Then how will you sort them into their proper order, Eddie?**

"Good point, V. Good point. Thrift store mugs it is. Let’s go shopping.”

**Yes. But you must first complete your article.**

“Aww, man, c’mon. Really? I thought we could do whatever we want?”

 **Whatever WE want. Together. What** **_you_ ** **want is inefficient.**

“Ugggghhhhh” says Eddie, pressing his fingers to his temples.  

They are still figuring out this symbiosis thing, but Venom has made it clear that most of the time Eddie’s got to make his own decisions.  On the other hand, it seems to have taken upon itself to make sure - life threatening situations and delicious looking mobsters notwithstanding - he makes _grown-up_ _decisions_.  He’d put this down to the time Venom spent inside Annie’s head but, if he recalls those frantic forty eight hours correctly, it’s been a bit of a theme since the beginning. Dammit.

“Seriously? Shopping, V. Food.”

**No. Finish your first draft and then we will find more mugs. And tots. And chocolate. Consider it a reward, Eddie.**

It’s giving him a toothy smirk.

Eddie sighs. The annoying thing about both Venom and Anne is they’re kinda… right?  He apparently can’t function as a human being without either a girlfriend or an alien consciousness in his brain.

He’s a journalist.  He knows news when he sees it and this is not news.  It is in fact, depressingly, something of a recurrent theme in his relationships. He used to have a sharp talking, sharp dressing, hot-shot lawyer and now he’s got an ostracised extraterrestrial who refuses to stop sticking its tongue in his ear.  

Who… cares about his wellbeing, and how he spends his time, helps him organise it wisely, and also appears to enjoy throwing him around the apartment for fun.  So honestly? It’s kind of all he’s ever wanted anyway.

“Fine.” says Eddie.

Venom gives a satisfied purr and licks his face.

“Gross, man.”

**Focus, Eddie.**

Eddie logs back in.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I should be doing NaNo.


End file.
